Price It

Have access to up-to-date prices of products and services to be smarter

consumers

Micro-workers supply the latest price information

Problem How to have access / find the most up-to-date prices

for products and services in developing countries? Food Gas Car repair Hair dresser etc

Problem

No place to go to find price information in developing countries People want to be smarter and educated shoppers

Why should a consumer buy things / pay for services at a higher price than they are?

Prices are not stable and the person in the middle is taking advantage

Difficult to conduct extensive research on prices Who can do the research? How long will it take? How

much will it cost? Discussion forums on deals and coupons are rare

Solution: Price It

• Micro-workers submit the latest price information

• Price It is a price query system that allows shoppers or companies to find up-to-date and real-time prices of products and services

• Prices are accessible through the web, mobile apps (different platforms), SMS and Voice to reach a wide audience

Advantages

• Users can find reliable price information quickly

• Shoppers can find best prices and avoid getting overcharged

• Companies can conduct basic price research on the ground easily without setting up an infrastructure

• Micro-workers can participate easily via SMS on their feature phones

• No need for an app through a smartphone, though an app front-end can be easily made to support the system

How It Works Example: Price of Fish

Micro-workers Users / Companies

Pharma X in Dakar is open from 8 am to 11 pm on Sunday 3/3/2012

Query: pharma dakar

Answer: X is open from 8 am to 11 pm on Sunday 3/3/2012

Date: 3/3/2012

Server

Web, mobile app, SMS or

Voice

SMS

Submission - Price of fish - Tuna

Query: What is the price of tuna in Dakar?

Answer: The average price of tuna is $5 in Dakar on 3/3/2012

LowestAverageHighest

Price

Location, type of

products / services

Subscription possible

How It Works: Users• Users submit price queries of products or services

via web, mobile apps, SMS or using voice

• Prices are organized by categories and locations at different levels of granularity (neighborhood, city, country)

• On the web and in the mobile app prices are mapped to increase visibility and graphs are accessible for specific periods of time

• Users can send one-time queries or subscribe to receive regular prices by SMS / Voice

Empowered consumers

Stable and lower prices

Checking the reliability of data by calling users and

sending alerts through apps and the web

How It Works: Micro-workers

• Micro-workers opt in to become reporters

• They select categories of products / services and locations they want to cover

• Selections are validated or some are proposed

• Micro-workers send daily prices and receive payments by SMS

• Some micro-workers receive regular requests for price submissions to cross-check the reliability of the submitted prices

Small payments to improve live

Checking the reliability of data with cross-

submissions

Revenue Model• Premium SMS / Voice for users (one-time queries)

and subscriptions

• Sponsored advertising in SMS / Voice

• For each SMS received on the network, the operators generally allow 2 SMS to be sent back

• Sponsored campaigns

• E.g., save energy, how to pay less for your phone bill

• Web site with advertising and premium service to access to more specific data

• Selling the data and base of users to consumer associations, market research firms, government agencies etc (with respect of privacy)

What we did already?• The presented idea extends on an app we

developed

• We developed an app called Yaboy that crowdsources the price of fish in Senegal

• Micro-work has the potential to make this idea successful

http://youtu.be/2VrkPJz3gkI